The Many Mistakes of Sirius Black
by CharlotteBlackwood
Summary: This is a sequel to The Many Mistakes of Gabriella McPeak. Sirius is living in Grimmauld Place, alone with only the worst of his memories, much like Azkaban. He is free, but caged; vindicated, but only barely; and he has learned the woman he loved was killed brutally, thinking he was a murderer and traitor. Mistakes are made for many reasons. Sirius Black is living proof. SB/OC, M
1. The First Mistake

**A/N: This is the sequel to **_**The Many Mistakes of Gabriella McPeak**_**, requested by **_**EmeraldStorm7**_**, and thus dedicated to her! There will be a third part, in about sixty chapters, when I've finished this story! I strongly encourage reading Gabriella's segment first, so you don't get spoilers in case you want to go back and read hers.**

** -C**

Sirius could feel his whole body tensing as he stood on the steps in front of that accursed house. He thought he'd been done with the place when he left at sixteen. Never had he imagined he'd be back, not like this.

"All right," he sighed, touching the door. "All right."

He didn't want to open the door, but Albus needed Grimmauld Place, and Sirius needed to do something useful, even if it would be painful.

He deserved pain, he thought, recalling what happened to Gabriella. He bit the inside of his lip hard, unlocking the door with a tap of his wand and listening to the clicks until they stopped before going inside.

The first thing he saw was the troll foot umbrella stand just inside the front door.

"Bugger," he growled, fighting the urge to kick the thing over and looking up at the elf heads on the landing. If he hadn't seen it so many times, he was sure he'd feel the urge to vomit.

His childhood home.

At least he didn't have much in the way of things to move in, he mused. He decided he'd set up in his old room, and when Remus showed up with Buckbeak they could put him in the master bedroom.

The hippogriff, not Remus. Although maybe they could share it during the full moon, have a bit of company. That could be a bit of fun, Sirius mused, tearing apart his precious mother's things.

Sirius climbed the stairs, listening to the creak in the old stairs, thinking back to events held in the room on the top of the house when he was a child, trying to remember if Gabriella had been there, terrorizing James or something.

But he couldn't recall. Horrifically, when he was in prison he did have one very vivid memory of Gabriella, stabbing herself in the stomach with a butcher knife in the middle of his kitchen at the bidding of his psychotic cousin.

To relive that memory every day for twelve years, that along with losing Lily and James...

It wasn't a good time in Azkaban, but he supposed that was kind of the point. If he had been enjoying himself, it wouldn't have been much of a punishment.

He made it to the top to his own room, opening the door to his old bedroom, being struck by the pictures of scantily clad females on the walls, Muggle all, with Permanent Sticking Charms to defy his mother with. He laughed, running his fingers along one of the once-glossy photographs of a girl bent over a motorbike wearing practically nothing. What a strange thing, to think that he'd once thought this girl looked like Gabriella McPeak. Gabriella had been far more beautiful.

Sighing, Sirius dropped onto his dusty, dirty bed that desperately needed to be cleaned properly and he pulled out of the drawer of his bedside table some parchment and a quill. It took longer to find an inkwell that wasn't entirely dry, but when he did he began to make a list.

The start was to ensure that the place was cleaned up and made safe to live in. Sirius wasn't sure what all was lurking in the house, but he had a feeling none of it was friendly. There would be issues with air quality, perhaps, and they would need to catalogue any dark and dangerous things they found. Some of these things could be done with the help of the Weasley children, who were scheduled to come stay there soon to help him clean the place up. Others would need to be done before they arrived, by Sirius, Remus, Mad-Eye and the like. At least he could count on Mad-Eye and that magical eye to know what was in things before he opened them. There were plusses to Mad-Eye being a living meat puzzle.

The thought of meat brought back the image of Gabriella stabbing herself and he dropped the quill, pulling his legs up to his chest and burying his face in his knees, trying to calm himself.

It would hit him at the worst times, the thought of her bleeding all over him. Sometimes, when he was trying to hunt down Peter, he would be struck with the memories of the color going out of her pretty lips and he would cry himself to sleep on the spot, unable to calm himself, unable to think of anything else.

He had more memories now, of Gabriella, but none so strong as the ones he wanted desperately to forget. He clutched his hands into fists, trying to forget the way her blood smelled, metallic and sweet. And how sticky and warm it was in his hands, the look of shock she'd given him as she regained her own mind before she fainted in his arms.

It was the most terrifying moment of Sirius's life, easily. Losing Lily and James was heartbreaking, but nothing scared him more than thinking that Gabriella was going to die because he'd made her a target with his love for her.

He tried to compose himself. There was work to be done, and at least a bare minimum had to be accomplished before he could make himself sleep in this room at night. Pulling himself to his feet, Sirius began to wipe his eyes and take deep, calming breaths. He had nearly finished composing himself when he heard the doorbell, and then the shrieks he thought he'd left behind when he ran away from home.

"_Who disturbs the House of Black!_" screamed the voice of his mother, and Sirius rushed back down the stairs with no hesitation. He opened the door to find Remus standing there.

"Welcome to hell," Sirius said with a grin. "Help me with this portrait."

"_Half-breeds!_" Mrs. Walburga Black shrieked. "_Scourge of my flesh!_"

"Lovely to see you too, mother," Sirius said, raising an eyebrow at the large portrait of his mother that had apparently woken up at the sound of the doorbell.

"What is that?" Remus asked, horrified. She was still shrieking, practically foaming at the mouth with her fury.

"That is my late mother, Moony," Sirius said. "Here, you take that curtain, I'll take this one, and let's see if we can't shut her up."

It took the two men a few minutes to get the curtains closed over the portrait, but they managed it.

"Right, she's got to go, although I wouldn't put it past her to have done a Sticking Charm," Sirius groaned, exhausted, rubbing his eyes.

"You have a house-elf?" Remus asked, confusion and surprise in his voice.

Sirius turned and looked over his shoulder, and saw an aged, bowed old house-elf in rags.

"Kreacher?" Sirius said, laughing. "I would have thought he'd be dead by now, but I guess wonders never cease."

"Good-for-nothing blood traitor, back to disturb my poor mistress," Kreacher said, almost under his breath, as if he thought the two men couldn't hear him. Sirius raised his eyebrows. "Master has returned," Kreacher now said in an ironic tone, bowing even lower than he naturally did. "Kreacher is pleased."

Remus coughed, obviously not sure if he should laugh or if that would be inappropriate.

"Nasty half-breed, infecting mistresses house with his blood and his breath," Kreacher muttered quite audibly. Remus's eyes grew incredibly wide.

"Shut up, Kreacher," Sirius said firmly. The house-elf instantly silenced. Sirius grinned. "I've always wanted to do that. Well, if he's got to be here, maybe we can figure out how to get some use out of him. Did you bring your things, Moony?"

Remus raised a rucksack half-heartedly.

"I just wanted to check in for now," he admitted. Get things settled, maybe get the rest of my things before dinner, pick up some food while I'm out."

Sirius frowned. He hadn't thought about the fact that he wasn't really able to leave the house for anything now that he was in it.

"Right," he said with a nod. "Right, well, let me show you to a room."

He led him to one of the guest rooms on the floor below his, hoping against hope that it would be reasonably clean.

"I wouldn't open any drawers without someone else around," Sirius said. "Use a lot of caution. And that attached bath probably needs a miraculous clean before it's safe to use. We can get started on it right away, so you don't have to worry about it."

"What about your room?" Remus asked. Sirius shrugged.

"I don't think my mother went in at all after I ran away," he admitted. "Its' a bit dustier than how I left it, but it's pretty safe otherwise."

The two old friends spent the afternoon making sure that Remus's room and other spaces they would come in contact with most regularly were livable, and they found very few surprises, which they were grateful for.

"It looks like Kreature lives over here," Remus said as they were going through the kitchen and pantry. Sirius followed him and looked in, frowning at the little nest Kreature had made for himself.

"Well, at least we'll know where to find him if he causes trouble," Sirius muttered. "I was thinking about Buckbeak. We should have someone bring him in tomorrow, and put him in my mother's old room."

Remus snorted.

"Only you, Padfoot," he said. "I'll talk to Diggle about it. He'd be willing to do it, and I think Chara has some experiences with hippogriffs. He'll be in good hands."

At the mention of Chara Montgomery, Sirius swallowed, thinking once more of Gabriella, this time recalling the tale of her disappearance and death, as Chara had related it to him and Remus. He gripped at the kitchen table and felt as though he might collapse for a moment.

"Padfoot? Are you all right?"

He had to get it together.

"Fine," he said. "I just…. This isn't easy, living in this house again."

Remus obviously could tell he was lying, but he didn't press on the matter.

"I'm going to go get food for dinner," he said slowly. "And then I'll pick up my things. "Anything you particularly want?"

Sirius looked around the kitchen, wondering what he hadn't eaten in a while, what would taste especially good in his childhood home. What was so Muggle that it would scandalize the furniture?

His lips curled up at the corners into his signature smirk and he said, "Yeah, why don't you get cheeseburgers?"

They enjoyed their fast food that night with relish. Remus had always been fond of cheeseburgers, and Sirius was always fond of anything that would defy his family. It was maybe a bit childish, but childish in the most delicious of ways, and it was the only sort of thing, he knew, that would keep him sane while he had to live in this godforsaken place.

"We'll have to put out a warning about not ringing the doorbell until we can figure out what to do about my dear mother," Sirius mused, dipping a French fry into a little blob of ketchup Remus had put on his plate.

"I'll warn Dedalus," Remus said, nodding. "Actually, I'd better warn Chara too. She's the one who's likely to actually remember."

Sirius snorted. Diggle was a good man, a surprisingly good ally in a war, but he was also foolish and a bit…absentminded. He wished he could remember what it was Professor McGonagall had always said about him, but it had been so long ago….

Crawling into his old bed that night, Sirius felt a distinct sense of hatred toward the building that was already beginning to encase him like a cage.

Sirius woke up to the sound of his mother shrieking, and he rolled over.

"I thought I had left this behind at sixteen," I hissed into his pillow.

It wasn't so much that he was stuck in his childhood home that bothered him. It was more that it was almost a literal preservation of the place he had run away from, the place that held all of his worst memories.

All but one.

He shivered, and was instantly grateful that he was not, instead, living in the place he'd had during the war. Probably it was sold to someone else when he went to prison.

By the time Sirius got downstairs, Remus and Dedalus must have closed the curtains over his mother again, because she was quiet.

"I'm so sorry," Dedalus was saying. "Chara reminded me and I forgot and I-"

"It's fine, really," Sirius lied, rubbing his eyes. "Let's get Buckbeak up here."

"Where are you putting him?" Chara asked, amused.

"My mother's bedroom," Sirius replied wryly, and he relished the fact that she laughed at this.

Once Buckbeak was situated, the four of them sat down for tea in the kitchen.

"I would tell you it's a lovely house," Chara said with a shrug. "But it's really not, is it?"

"No, you're absolutely right," Sirius agreed, smirking. "It's a verifiable shit-hole."

"Sirius," Remus said sternly.

"Oh, come off it, Moony. This place is hell on earth. It's the unfortunate truth, since we have to live here. But it's the truth nonetheless. The fact that my mother has a demonic portrait of herself in the entrance only makes it that much worse."

"I took a look at it while you were getting Buckbeak situated, actually," Remus said, stirring sugar into his second cup of tea. "It's definitely a Permanent Sticking Charm. We'll see if anything can be done short of taking out the wall, but I don't think it's likely."

Sirius sighed. He had been afraid of this news, but he took it in stride. He was determined, while there were people visiting, to be a decent host, even if he didn't have a decent house to host in. After all, he was raised to be a proper host. That was really the only positive thing he could point to coming from his childhood. Lily had always commended him on his excellent manners.

Well, except where Gabriella was concerned. There he had been told off by everyone who knew the details of the thing, although he thought eventually even Lily and Remus took a kind of pity on him. Remus especially in a way, because he had known Gabriella in the way that Sirius had. He had loved her, he had possessed her, and she flatly turned him away. Perhaps she never hated Remus, but Sirius knew that the turning away when he actually got up the nerve to make a move and make himself feel like his need for her outweighed his thoughts of not being good enough for her.

Sirius became melancholy at these thoughts, and when Dedalus and Remus went off to see if there was anything they could do to make Buckbeak's food situation more viable, Sirius began picking at a spot on the table to avoid looking up at Chara, who was watching him closely.

After a long moment, she said, "You're thinking about her, aren't you?"

His head jerked up to look at her. He was stunned for a moment that she would realize this was what occupied his mind, but then, she knew and cared more about Gabriella than anyone else left in the Order except for him and Remus.

"Of course I am," he muttered, looking back down at the table. "There's not a day that goes by when I don't think of her."

Admitting it was almost a blow to his pride, because from everything he knew of her end, Gabriella died not only not loving him, but thinking him capable of unspeakable betrayal. And he loved her so completely, all those twelve years, and it just felt like he was the one being stabbed with that butcher knife to think of how his stupid, childish, selfishness had not only ruined any chance he'd had with her, but in the end ruined her as well.

"Was it my fault?" he asked, looking up at Chara's dark eyes and hoping she would tell him it wasn't, even though he knew such words could only be lies. "I killed her, didn't I? It's my fault they targeted her."

"She was targeted because she was close to members of the Order," Chara said slowly. "Your cousin's husband said as much in the trial. But…you were only a part of that. If it hadn't been because you loved her, it would have been because she was friends with the Potters. They didn't seem to know for certain what Remus's allegiances were."

Sirius could have laughed at this. He certainly knew that he'd had a hard time figuring out what Remus's allegiances were, as well.

"Tell you what," she said slowly. "Next time I come around, I'll bring my box. It's got news clippings, trial transcripts Dumbledore attained for me…. It's a veritable gold mine if anyone wants to study her."

"Why would they do that?" Sirius snorted.

Chara blinked at him.

"But they have. She was a mentally unstable pureblood who was tortured and killed by the Death Eaters, after Voldemort was defeated. She's famous. I get interviewed about her every time someone writes a book on the war."

This was such a strange concept that Sirius just stared at her, trying to wrap his brain around Gabriella, his Gabriella, becoming some sort of martyr symbol for the first war, a textbook trope, just another especially good war story.

She was so much more than that. She had always been so much more than that.

Sirius told Chara, as she and Dedalus were leaving not long after, that he would very much like to see her collection.

What harm could come in it?

And that was his first mistake.


	2. Going Through the Motions

There was sun. Of course there had to be sun. Sirius had not left the house in three days, so naturally the sun had to be out.

He could imagine himself out in the little grassy area between the houses, running in his Animagus form, chasing his tail and passing butterflies, falling onto his side and laying out in the brilliant light of the sun's rays.

He missed Hogwarts, the freedom of so much open space that he couldn't possibly be seen or recognized. But Remus had been keeping a close eye on him since it got sunny, so there was no real chance of escape.

"Couldn't I just go outside for five minutes?" Sirius whined.

"No," Remus said, not looking up from his book. "You know better than anyone how quickly you could be arrested or killed if you were seen and recognized by the wrong people. I don't want you to feel like I'm babysitting you, Sirius, but-"

"But it's exactly what you're doing," Sirius pouted, folding his arms across his chest.

Remus looked up at him and smiled just a little bit.

"Well, if you insist on acting like a child," he teased. "Yes, I'm going to treat you like one."

Sirius didn't find this amusing.

"Let's have lunch," Remus suggested with a sigh when he realized that Sirius was going to pout. "The Weasleys are coming tonight. You're going to need your strength."

Sirius snorted at this, but agreed, and they went to the kitchen and began to make ham sandwiches.

"I think," Remus said very solemnly as they sat down, "that we have a lot of work that the Weasley children can help with. The doxies, for one. Actually most of the drawing room should be handled easily enough. And there's cleaning the walls on the third floor. They're showing mold."

Sirius just nodded, not really caring if the house was never completely clean. Safe, yes. He wanted it to be safe for when the children came around, but he really didn't care if the unused rooms remained a sty.

Kreacher would probably be more comfortable that way, anyway.

"Do you want pickles?" Remus asked politely, and Sirius jerked out of his reverie, remembering the strange light in Gabriella's eyes the one time they'd had sex. How could he not have realized? That light had been there when they fought while Harry was being born, too, that light that was both horrifying and entrancing and made him want to possess her utterly.

"I'm sorry, what?" Sirius asked, shaking that thought of Gabriella coming undone beneath him from his mind.

"Pickles," Remus said, his face darkening. Sirius must have had an expression he used when he was thinking about Gabriella, because everyone seemed to know.

"No, thanks," Sirius said. "I'm going to make some tea. Do you want some?"

"Please."

He turned away from Remus, trying to get a grip on his thoughts. He could recall their first kiss, their lips meeting in James's basement while she sat on his lap. He missed her so much he could almost taste her.

It was strange to think of her dead, even though he'd resigned himself to the thought that he might never see her again when she went away to France. She never wrote him back once. He had mourned her then, as though she was lost to him forever.

The cruelest thing Bellatrix had done was not killing Gabriella, for at least a part of her had wanted to die for as long as he'd known her, but it was giving Sirius one last taste of her before taking her out of the world forever.

"Sirius, the kettle's boiling over."

Sirius swore and poured the tea, carefully cooling the kettle with his wand before putting it in the sink. He handed Remus one of the cups and sat down next to his sandwich.

"Sirius, she's gone. And I know that's difficult, but…she's gone. I realize that I've had longer to come to terms with it than you have, but she didn't love you. She didn't die loving you. She died hating you."

"That makes it worse," Sirius snapped. "Don't you see, Moony, that this is all my fault?"

Remus raised his eyebrows and picked up his cup of tea.

"No, actually," he said, a bit coldly. "I don't see. I'm rather under the impression that it's Bellatrix to blame, not you."

Sirius pounded his fist on the table.

"I pushed her to France. I couldn't get over her when she never wrote me back, and then when she was back I tried to win her over again. I made her a target, which led to Bellatrix putting her through horrible things, and then I was so caught up looking for Peter that I couldn't even…I couldn't…"

"She wouldn't have wanted you to save her, Sirius," Remus said, a bit more gently. There was a horrific silence as Sirius looked at Remus, wondering if he was talking about Gabriella's suicidal tendencies, or her hatred of him. He could find no compelling reason to continue this conversation. He pushed away his sandwich and picked up his cup of tea.

"I'll be in…in…"

Where would he go?

"I'll be in the study if you need anything," he then said darkly. And then he hurried off, not exactly storming out of the room, but certainly leaving as quickly as his feet could carry him. He wanted freedom from that conversation, from those memories.

Of course, there was no escape from the memories. There was never an escape. He could leave one conversation, but as soon as he sat down in his father's study, Sirius was thinking of her again, the way her hair felt in his fingers, the sound of her voice as he made love to her…. Everything was so fragile and beautiful and tragically wrong. He had always loved her, but never how he should have, and she stopped loving him because she could not see him as he was.

On a sudden inspiration, Sirius picked up a book off the shelf, a genealogy of purebloods. They had some excellent old ones, but his mother had bought new ones each time one of her children was finally listed. He grabbed the one from when Regulus was born and flipped through it, searching for the McPeak page.

There she was, Gabriella McPeak, two older sisters and newborn. Nothing was wrong with her yet. She had no troubles. She had nothing in her way. The world was full of possibilities then.

How did a girl with everything fall so far?

There was a knock at the door.

"Sirius?" Remus said. "The Weasleys are here."

Sirius did not respond, still looking at her name on the page. Remus poked his head in, frowning.

"Padfoot, if that book is what I think it is, you'd better put it away before I burn it. You're not going to sit up here sulking at that page until the war is over. I won't let you waste away like that."

Suddenly, Sirius felt as though he understood some of why Gabriella had been suicidal. There was something about pureblood expectation that was stifling, suffocating, and combined with the raw deal life had dealt her….

He half wanted to throw himself off a roof, too.

Still, there were appearances to keep, and Sirius knew that he had work to do, even if it wasn't the sort of work he would prefer. He put the book away, following Remus down to the kitchen, where the Weasleys were sitting around the table.

"Arthur," Sirius said, shaking the hand of the man at the head of the table. "Good to see you."

They hadn't really seen each other in a very long time indeed, and Arthur shook his hand with surprising vigor.

"You look remarkably recovered," Arthur said. There was something awkward inherent in their interaction, knowing that not so long ago, Arthur had been of the mind that Sirius was a crazed mass murderer out to kill Harry.

"Proper food and a bed to sleep in can do that," Sirius said darkly. Molly Weasley sniffed.

"You can't have had much in the way of proper food yet," she said. "You're skin and bones! I'll have to make a nice big dinner, start turning you into a human being again."

Sirius could feel his lips dancing into a sort-of smile, and he found the eldest Weasley child standing up to shake his hand.

"Bill, right?" he asked, recalling the red-headed man from the hospital wing that night when Voldemort rose again.

"Yes," Bill said, nodding. "I'll be here as well. I've shifted to regular bank-work, so I can be here. I'm needed here."

Sirius nodded, looking around at all the red heads of hair.

"Is this the whole clan, then?" he asked, trying to be good-natured. It wasn't that he didn't want to see them all, to meet them. They'd been good to Harry, he knew that. But he was in a lot of personal pain, and he didn't want them to see.

"No, Charlie, my second child," Molly said, "is still in Romania, and will be doing some Order work abroad."

Sirius realized then that Bill had not chosen to move home because he was sure he'd be more useful in England. He'd come home because he knew his mother would need the extra support. That was a good son, he realized. The sort of son he liked to think he would have been, had he not had a harpy for a mother.

"So," he said, turning to the other children, "I know which one Ginny is." They all laughed. "And Ron and I have met, obviously. You two must be Fred and George, then."

"Guilty," the chimed together, grinning.

Sirius could have sworn there had been another brother, someone who had owned the rat originally, but if there was Molly hadn't mentioned him for a reason. It seemed these were the only ones who would be living under his roof, so they were the only ones who mattered. If curiosity persisted, he could ask Remus about it later. He would know what was going on.

"Great," he said dully. "So, Remus has a list of things that need to be worked on in the house, obviously. Molly, perhaps you and him can go over it, decide what the children can help with and what we ought to do without them."

Molly seemed pleased that he was giving her this kind of power over the situation. After all, it was his house. Still, they were her children, and if she didn't want them clearing doxies, he wasn't going to try to force her hand on it.

"I'll show them to their rooms," Remus said happily. "I've gotten them all cleaned out this morning."

Sirius stood there for a moment and Molly Weasley came around the table and grasped his arm.

"Hermione Granger will be coming soon," she said, with false brightness. "She'll be staying here too, until the school year begins."

"Yes," Sirius said, recalling that vaguely. "Yes, she can share a room with Ginny."

"They would like that," Molly said, nervously. "That's what they do at the Burrow."

Sirius nodded. Finally, she said, "I know you knew my brothers. I just…I wanted to tell you that they held you in very high esteem, before…"

Before they had died.

He nodded sharply. He knew what she was getting at and appreciated the gesture, but there was only so much remembering of the first war that he wanted to do, that he could possibly allow himself. He tried not to think about the Prewetts, tried not to think about all the wonderful people who had laid down their lives to protect this generation.

It had all been for nothing.

Molly went up to learn the rooms, leaving Sirius alone in the kitchen, fiddling with one of the chairs that needed to be fixed. He would ask Remus to do it. Knowing him, he'd likely break it.

There was a knock on the kitchen door not ten minutes later and Sirius looked up to see Chara standing there with a box, smiling sheepishly.

"Remus let me in," she said, shrugging. "He told me you were down here, pouting."

Sirius gave her a weak smile and she entered the room, setting down the box between them, pulling out a large stack of newspaper clippings.

"It was very well-covered," Chara said as he took the stack from her thick fingers. "Society writer for the Prophet disappears and all that. Cuffe was distraught. He still doesn't like to talk about it. I think he fancied her."

He snorted.

"Chara, everyone fancied her, even when the pretended they didn't. Everyone except James. He just pitied her."

"He more than pitied her," Chara insisted. "I've read his letters to her at the hospital in France. He considered her a very good friend. Anyway, I read your letters to her as well. They were beautiful."

Sirius blinked.

"She never responded to them," he said sadly.

"She never got them," Chara said with a shrug. "Gillian never sent them along, never opened them or anything. She told me she thought it would have stopped Gabby from getting well as quickly, knowing that you were still…ah, messing with her."

Sirius felt his whole body tense at this. He was not messing with Gabriella. He had loved her, plain and simple. Of course, nothing was ever that plain and simple, but he did his best. He really did love her with all his heart. And he had thought, when she left for France, that deep inside she knew that.

"So she wasn't just trying to push me away," he whispered, holding up the first clipping, which was an announcement that Gillian Messner had reported her friend, Gabriella McPeak as missing. It made him feel slightly sick to know that if she hadn't been a pureblood who had a history of mental illness, Gabriella likely wouldn't have caused a fuss right away at all when she went missing. They would have assumed, that night, that she'd gone home with someone she'd met at the bar, because it said in the clipping that she was last seen at the Hog's Head. Dodgy place, of course. Everyone knew that. So a drunk girl was stupid and went home with someone without telling her girlfriend. So what?

But that girl was a pureblood, a girl with an unstable mind, a girl Albus Dumbledore himself stressed as important to find, for her safety. The more Sirius read of the clippings, the guiltier he felt. Gabriella's case did not include a single disappearance or death. Rylan, her Healer, was found dead, and the handful of old friends and almost-lovers who went looking for her all disappeared or were found dead.

Just as Gabriella was eventually found dead, in a Lestrange property, in pieces. The Auror department didn't know what they had, until they started testing the hair and found it to be from a missing girl.

"This is terrible," Sirius whispered. "It's like, nobody really cares except that they have to, because the story's too good to pass up on."

"The writer of these three," Chara said, touching three of the clippings that he'd spread out on the table, "is Rita Skeeter. She got her big break during the war, writing sensationalist pieces. She's known for tearing people to shreds. Everyone, really. No one is too good or too low to be punctured by Rita's quill."

Sirius blinked, glancing back over those three again. That didn't seem right.

"But these are all so complimentary," he said slowly.

"Exactly," Chara said softly. "They're the only ones like it I can find in her career save one, and that one was written before Gabriella disappeared, when they were working together at the _Prophet_. I think Rita admired Gabby, and I think she may have been the only person Rita Skeeter has ever admired. Rita's very jealous that I get to write the biography, but I've pacified her by guaranteeing that she will be interviewed. She worked under Gabby when she was first hired, you know. They were hired days apart."

He flipped through the articles discussing Gabriella's death, and what this meant in light of the war, the articles that connected her to him, and how he had destroyed her. She was fragile, and he knew it, the articles said. He used her, toyed with her, and when she had recovered in France he broke her all over again. Somehow, he'd even set up the whole kidnap-torture-murder scenario to be enacted if he was dead or captured, because – the author speculated – Sirius had a dark enough heart to not want her to exist if he could not have her.

Sirius's stomach turned when he looked at saw that this particular article had been a memorializing article written by her brother. He pushed it underneath and article covering the funeral.

"So you're writing her biography?" Sirius asked, trying not to feel too hurt about it. "I wish I could give you more information. But I guess interviewing me would put you in danger, wouldn't it? You know, my being a wanted criminal and all."

Chara laughed, and Sirius realized that he'd not heard her laugh since they were in school. It was a nice-sounding laugh, not the most beautiful he'd ever heard, but in the way he'd been going about life, it sounded strangely heartening.

"Perhaps if I think about it long enough," she said happily, "I'll come up with a way. Do you have any papers? A journal or anything that could serve as your testimony?"

Sirius pursed his lips.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I have all the letters she sent me when we were in school. Remus found them in my old house before selling it. Do you want those?"

"Yes," Chara said quickly. "Anything you've got. And if you want to write back-dated journals, I'd take those too. For your take on things. Perhaps…perhaps there could be a way to vindicate you."

Sirius nodded, but he didn't think so. He didn't think he deserved to be vindicated, where Gabriella was concerned.


End file.
